Luciad, a software provider for high performance visualization of geospatial information, has been selected by the Thales and EADS Consortium to provide the software components for visualizing the common operational picture within OE SIC Terre, the overall operation to harmonize legacy and future Army Computerized Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence (C4I) programs. The resulting common shared information and communication platform will enable the French army to operate on the digitized battle space.
OE SIC Terre is an ambitious program, launched by the French Ministry of Defense, intended to increase combat effectiveness by networking all players in the battle space and speeding up shared information among them, which means quicker response and rapid deployment of expeditionary forces. This common technical platform connecting French army legacy and future systems is currently being developed by Thales as lead contractor, teaming with EADS as joint industrial prime contractor. It will automate information exchanges, and manage networking of all operational information systems, delivering enhanced interoperability in national, multi-national and NATO environments.Luciad’s core product LuciadMap is used to build both the OE SIC Terre platform’s geospatial visualization capability and tactical editor. As the common shared technical platform, OE SIC Terre will be used to build the new versions of SICF, the French Army’s Command, Control and Information System, and SIR, the Regiment Information System designed to support joint airland operations. Luciad’s technology fully integrates with these programs’ Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), enabling the French army’s commanders to easily visualize, edit and analyze operational geo-referenced information via a standard web browser, using simple hardware and a reduced bandwidth. LuciadMap was selected thanks to its unique ability to combine geographic data from a wide variety of sources and formats into one coherent view, easily accessible via Luciad’s OGC Web Map Services. All applications built with the OE SIC Terre technical platform will take advantage of the ergonomic user interface capabilities on the client side, allowing commanders to visualize the battle space situation in 2D and 3D, using near real-time sources of situational data. The additional implementation of the LuciadMap Terrain Feature Analysis package for interpreting Digital Terrain Elevation Data facilitates advanced mission planning. The LuciadMap-based tactical editor directly supports war fighting symbology. In applications such as SICF and SIR, the tactical editor will enable commanders to create and edit units using NATO-standard tactical symbols, reading directly from order-of-battle databases and viewing them in a hierarchical tree structure. According to Mr. Hubert de Ponthaud, in charge of the OE SIC Terre Program at Thales Land & Joint Systems: “Its high flexibility, short development cycle, and fast fielding make LuciadMap the COTS product of choice to build the MOIE SIC Terre’s geospatial visualization component.” “LuciadMap’s open and network-centric approach perfectly suits the Service Oriented Architecture of MOIE SIC Terre. Being selected by Thales and EADS for this major technology platform on which a wide range of other command and control systems for the French army will be based, opens up new perspectives for Luciad’s position in the French defense market”, adds Lode Missiaen, CEO of Luciad. |
